Classified legal memo argues Trump wasn’t constrained by US or international law for Maduro capture operation

(CNN) — A new classified legal opinion produced by the Justice Department argues that President Donald Trump was not limited by domestic law when approving the US operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro because of his constitutional authority as commander-in-chief and that he is not constrained by international law when it comes to carrying out law enforcement operations overseas, according to sources who have read the memo.

The Office of Legal Counsel opinion, which is between 20-30 pages, was provided to lawmakers on Tuesday, the sources said. It builds on a 1989 legal opinion authored by William Barr, who was at the time the head of the OLC and later served as attorney general in Trump’s first term.

That memo argued that a president had “inherent constitutional authority” to order the FBI to take people into custody in foreign countries, even if it violated international law to do so. The new opinion takes that as a given, the sources said and stipulates that the only question at issue is whether Trump was constrained by any domestic laws — specifically, the Constitution and the War Powers Act — when he ordered the Maduro operation without congressional authorization.

The opinion assesses that Trump was not constrained by domestic law because he has an authority under Article II of the US constitution as commander-in-chief to deploy troops and commit forces to operations. It also argues that the scale, scope, and duration of the Maduro operation did not rise to the level of war in the constitutional sense and therefore did not require prior authorization by Congress, the sources said.

The Justice Department released an unclassified version of the memo on Tuesday, which says the OLC did not reach a definitive conclusion about how international law applied to the operation, codenamed Absolute Resolve, because when it comes to rendition, international law “does not restrict the president as a matter of domestic law.”

The memo cites the 1989 Barr opinion extensively, and explains that it was written prior to the operation based on the plans briefed to the department by Trump administration officials — plans that did not seem to cross the line into a war in the constitutional sense, the memo says.

“What does define the President’s authority to order Absolute Resolve is the Constitution,” the memo says. “Based on how the facts were briefed to us on December 22, 2025, we think the president could reasonably make the determinations necessary to order Absolute Resolve.”

The opinion caveated that the operation had to be proportional in its use of the military to support a law enforcement operation, and noted that the OLC had not assessed that the threat posed by Maduro before he was ousted was “sufficient to justify an attack on Venezuela itself, as military commanders have not advised that Maduro’s actions are a direct or imminent threat to US forces.”

But the likelihood of encountering armed resistance in carrying out a narrowly targeted law enforcement operation justified enlisting the support of US military forces, the memo says.

“President Trump is committed to enforcing United States law, and the successful rendition of Nicolas Maduro to the United States to answer for his lifetime of crimes was lawful,” a White House official told CNN when asked about the OLC memo. “This was an administration-wide effort to arrest the head of a major narco-trafficking foreign terrorist organization, who has long been a fugitive of American justice. The Department of Justice routinely executes federal arrest warrants abroad.”

Trump administration officials have argued that the attack was chiefly a law enforcement operation aimed at bringing Maduro and his wife to justice. Democratic lawmakers have argued, however, that removing the head of state of a country by military force does constitute an act of war.

Officials have also insisted that Maduro’s capture was not a regime change operation, since the Venezuelan government remains largely intact and is now led by his deputy Delcy Rodriguez, CNN has reported.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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